It's time to take the blinkers off

Vice-President Dick Cheney's visit is a good opportunity to
reflect on the American alliance and why it has become so central a
tenet of faith for successive Australian governments. Labor
opposition to the war in Iraq, now emboldened by the Democratic
majority in Congress, is carefully expressed in terms of
strengthening relations with a future, and most likely Democratic,
American administration.

Peter Garrett may well have told the truth when he said he now
supported US bases in Australia and politicians should not be bound
by beliefs they held several decades ago. What is disturbing about
the whole debate is its absence: conformity to a particular view of
the world decrees that it is "un-Australian" to seriously suggest
that American bases might decrease rather than increase Australia's
security.

While Kevin Rudd speaks of withdrawing Australian forces from
Iraq - well, some of them, at some future date - the Labor Party
accepts without dispute the basic American picture of the world. In
this view, the world is divided between the forces of good, namely
the West, and a motley collection of rogue states, fundamentalist
Islamists and terrorists who together attack democracy and "our way
of life".

This is essentially the Cold War imagery that most politicians
grew up with, transposed to a somewhat different world in which
non-democratic states such as China and Saudi Arabia are embraced
as allies. For Australians, the Cold War had particularly racist
overtones, as conflation of the "red menace" and the "yellow peril"
was used to justify our long involvement in fighting in Vietnam.
Today the racist overtones remain, but the objects of this racism
are Arab and Muslim.

Almost without a break we have resumed the language of "the
West", conveniently lumping ourselves with the Atlantic world,
which is somewhat closer to the battlefields of Baghdad than is
Australia. How often do our politicians reflect on the ways in
which this language will affect our relationships with countries of
Asia, particularly those with Islamic majorities, who may be less
certain that a language that invokes the brutality of the crusades
and European imperialism is appropriate for today's tensions?

Beyond specific policies, where increasingly the President of
the United States is clearly acting against the majority view of
his own citizenry, the danger is that Australians do not have the
ability to see the world with our own eyes. The world is full of
democratic states as much opposed to terrorism as Australia, but
which have not found it necessary to sign up to the evangelical
language of the US Administration. Yet images of the world come to
us almost unmediated from British and American television -
ironically SBS News' greater coverage of the international owes
much to feeds from American television reportage - so we ignore the
way in which the adventures in Iraq are perceived in, say, Brazil,
Malaysia or Germany.

It is absurd that Australian politicians are required to prove
their patriotism by constantly proclaiming their support of the
American alliance. Nations make alliances for convenience, and the
US will support Australia because it is in its national interest,
not because our Prime Minister goes to presidential barbecues.
Conservatives remind us that we owe gratitude to the Americans for
WWII, but they came to Australia's defence after Pearl Harbor was
bombed, not because we were threatened.

Nor are Australia's interests synonymous with those of the US.
America is the world's dominant power, and will pursue its
self-interest ruthlessly. Australia is at best a middle-sized
power, with far greater ambitions to strut the world stage than is
good for us, and is part of a region where few states and societies
see the world as does Washington. The Howard Government will claim
that our regional relationships remain strong, but this ignores the
damage over time by the perception that Australia is no more than a
willing puppet of the US.

History and a common language ensure that there are close ties
to the US. But these do not require us to support all of its
ventures internationally. The Prime Minister seeks to reduce the
debate about our presence in Iraq to one of "not ratting on our
mates".

But under certain circumstances we do demand that our mates
change their behaviour, as the Government's domestic campaigns on
terrorism and domestic violence encourage us to do.

At this point the majority of people in a majority of the
world's countries see the Untied States as a major threat to world
peace, and a barrier against developing genuine institutions of
global governance and order.

Whether this is a correct perception or not, it demands serious
discussion. To denounce those who disagree with his policies as
less patriotic than those who support President Bush is to assume a
colonial position vis-a-vis a superpower that is increasingly
losing support across the world.

It is, to use a term I despise, un-Australian.

Dennis Altman is professor of politics at La Trobe
University. His most recent book is Fifty First
State.

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